"I believe... that this is checkmate, Detective."
Those words carried in the breezy tone their deliverer spoke with so routinely and yet were holding the weight of possibly her entire school life. That weight took form in the deep chill gradually spilling over her face, as her otherwise-stoic eyes darted back and forth from the board to its undisputed conqueror sitting across. Her chilling face and her darting eyes were evidence to the length of her disbelief as she inspected the validity of the outcome over and over; even when it had all crumbled right before her.
Once the black queen took to the field, her strategy fell apart before she could mount any counter-attack to stop its rampage. Worse still, Celestia's air-tight formation had made the strongest piece unassailable, making her own queen seem feeble by comparison as it was swept aside like the rest of her forces; it wasn't long before her king was boxed in.
She could investigate any crime scene, analyze any clue, and imagine any number of scenarios for how an incident had played out, and she would come away with an answer. And yet despite all that brilliance and against all the confidence she'd walked in here with, in the end this simply wasn't her arena; worse than that overestimation was her underestimation of the arena's reigning master. Tonight may have been the worst possible to be having an off-night!
No matter what sort of night she was having, it was about to become that much worse. Because now came the cumulative price of all those strategic miscalculations...
"Furthermore... I believe you have an end of our bargain to keep up." She gave that all-important declaration with the kind of leisurely, deliberate pace that relished in the moment's spoils.
The silver-haired girl blanched even paler with the gravity of those words as they sunk in, having said herself how much the victor enjoyed trouncing and humiliating her challengers (as Togami before her had found out). And if the victor had to guess, she would even say her trouncee was shaking slightly with the passing seconds.
Celestia's frozen smile probably would've been beaming for once if not for her uncanny ability to hide that fact, just nearly accomplishing Kyouko's goal to see it crack just a bit. She had burned the precious sight of watching her rival squirm all throughout the slow and thorough defeat she'd been handed into her memory, knowing there was plenty more squirming to be had. This must be how she feels delivering the last linchpin of evidence that triggers the culprit's downfall after a long, hard-fought case. And it felt glorious.
Eyes coming back from the blackened board with all the realization she needed to see that this was happening, Kyouko closed those widened eyes and sighed weakly. "Fine, then."
She hastily loosened her tie and reached for her blouse's zipper, prepared to take off all the layers that made her a private eye and get this over with before she was stopped with a waving finger.
"Ah-ah-ah, no assumptions, Kirigiri..." she smirked then, "I haven't even told you my conditions." Kyouko's gloved hands lowered from the lapels of her collar. "And don't worry: I won't have you run around in your birthday suit."
Just like a master poker-player, Celestia steadily kept her guessing until wholly ready to reveal her hand; even when she'd already won, that habit stayed firm. "Then... what...?"
The girl in black took a final sip of black tea before she stood up from the table.
"While it's tempting to see what the Headmaster... or Naegi-kun for that matter would think of such a sight," and the very image of their faces made her cringe, "I have something much more personal planned for you." The vagueness dripping from those words made the defeated girl cringe again.
"After all... You're my prize... and a prize should only be left on display for its owner."
The level of her dread shot higher than ever from finding herself being claimed like some kind of plunder won at the tables by her apparent 'owner'. What mercy could she expect from someone so vastly-removed from it?
"Now... stand ready... and turn around."
Even with her fate in the hands of someone who -like a spoiled child- saw her as a toy to be played with and worn out, Kyouko's honor to her word exceeded all those fears; she complied slowly; reluctantly.
She turned to face the wall at the other side of the room and in turn heard a terse clinking sound quickly after. Her head whipped back on panicked reflex to see Celestia having just removed her silver finger-piece, left atop the table they'd played on.
"With what I'm about to do... I hardly think it would be fair to leave this on." No matter how much joy she took in prolonging this, she kept her guise of affability enough to use token words like 'fair'; or perhaps she meant being fair to herself.
"Now then, eyes straight; chop-chop." More questions blazing through the detective's mind than she had time to collect, she complied with that order slowly and reluctantly too as a bead of sweat rolled down her cheek.
Celestia indicated for her to lean her head forward and soon Kyouko felt the delicate hands of the gambler splitting the veil of her hair down the center like a curtain before carrying it over her shoulders. She was sure the lingering flow those delicate hands took -as if she thought she were arranging flowers- was intentional. Now her back was uncovered, and it made the heat collect under a collar she'd been so few moments away from removing.
Lingering still, Celestia's hands soon traced their way down to the small of her back. Those dainty hands could have been called gentle, but the aura of invasion their owner radiated made them electrifying to the touch. They could have even been called graceful as they pressed on down her body, but going coupled with the uneasiness churning in her stomach and the uncertainty of what awaited her just made their every move that much more unsettling.
Finally, those ungentle, ungraceful hands neared her waist and their next move was so electrifying and so unsettling that -against all the scenarios she'd imagined- it took the young woman by surprise in more ways than she could ever count. A single breath came out in a shotgun heave as a brisk and very sharp feeling shot through her backside.
The first thing she felt was an enormous tension firing up and down the fibers of her black underwear, starting from the rear-most band where a coil of lithe fingers clawed into. In reaction to the pressure that was rapidly-building, the lacy threads quickly spiraled into a thin line that pressed up against the space between her buttocks and wrapped up toward the space between her legs, her high-heels prying from the carpeted floor as her body weight submitted to all of these things.
It was such a strange, new feeling that processing a response was difficult at first. But as the seconds went by with the strangeness and newness setting in, taking shape beside it was the complete clarity of how much she disliked what was happening.
Celestia was actually giving her a goddamn wedgie. Of course she'd already learned about the practice from the time she'd spent overseas; the same presumably went for the one giving it as a symptom of being the foreign culture freak that she was.
The only thing the detective couldn't deduce was why the hell such a ridiculous prank was being practiced on her.
She shot back to the gambler with an incredulous scowl. "...Are You Serious!?"
Her scowl was countered by a grin so blatantly brimming with self-satisfaction that it couldn't have been called anything but serious. "Quite. I've always wanted to try this on you." As if on cue, she dropped and then caught the girl in a brusque but biting bounce.
Kyouko groaned as the narrow fabric lashed against her center like a whip. "I can't imagine your reasoning..."
The gothic lolita girl's grin could only go so wide because she knew no one else would ever see it. "Well I suppose you might say..." she started with a pause that wanted to milk this moment for all its worth, "that attitude is exactly why."
The intensity of the glare Kyouko sent -and she wasn't sure she could have glared any harder- was lost by the intrusion of another hefty jouncing, as if the crazy girl doing it was under the impression that her panties doubled as a bungee cord. This intrusion went on for the next minute.
She knew from the first time they met that this girl could be playful, which was understandable for someone who made their career by playing.
She also knew how that playfulness was a peculiarity that compelled her to lie and manipulate so much in the first place, as if subtly tricking people were some kind of game only she knew the rules to.
Most of all, she knew well the worrisome -and at times borderline dangerous- temper tantrums that this playful girl would throw whenever she (in her own mind) wasn't getting her way.
But it seems her childishness went deeper than originally suspected. They were both way too old for this!
The jouncing didn't stop. "May I remind you, Kirigiri, that it was you who came here with the intent to humiliate me; not the other way around." That was a lie.
"You'd never take such a deal otherwise." She sprung the girl especially hard as she gave her next lie, in spiteful rhythm with every word. "Don't expect me to allow such a slight to go... un-pun-ished." That wasn't a lie, and for it she saved the three heaviest drops.
That was also a lie: the next several drops were harsher, but more painfully than that, even if she'd crafted a narrative which justified it, Celestia clearly had this 'retaliation' planned from the beginning.
Despite Kyouko's thinking she could evade any trap, and that it had brought her goal that much closer, offering that stupid bet had been her tormentor's lure to bring this torment about instead; and she'd taken the bait hook, line and sinker.
And it was right then that the girl who was now being bullied for it realized how badly she'd lost -once again underestimating the reigning master of gambles- before her glare faded into some form of compliance with the totality of that loss.
"Then... do whatever you want."
If this stupidity was to be a part of her school experience, then so be it; her stoicism could weather far worse things than this.
Taking her invitation with gusto, Celestia jounced the girl more and more in an unrestrained frenzy, and Kyouko squirmed each and every time, purely on impulse; it was hard not to when hundreds of threads were working together to grind the most sensitive parts of her body raw. By the last several elevations, she'd gripped and held the overstretched elastic herself in some fruitless attempt to push away from the jolts of agony crashing into her over and over and over.
"Ow..."
And on another note -and it wasn't that she was particularly heavy- but she found herself middling between strangely perturbed and strangely impressed that someone so petite was hiding such strength. Or was it just willpower? A total disregard for her own limitations? Either answer would have been both impressive and identically painful.
"Oww..."
That analysis of the ridiculous situation she found herself being forced to bear had probably arrived out of habit, or maybe in some attempt at reliving her mind of the ridicule that came with having to accept it. And it was all cut off as quickly as it came by the cleaving impact of yet another bounce; their impact seemed to be growing worse.
"Oww...!"
In tandem with that worsening impact were the worsening jitters of frustration rippling across the delicate features of the impact's originator. It was Celestia that was somehow growing more frustrated of the two.
No, there was more to it than that. Perhaps the correct word would be completely livid.
Such misbehavior! Such brazen disobedience! Such impudent disregard for the agreement!
She'd won the bet fair and square; they shook on it and everything! But more importantly, she had already decided tonight's entertainment and this was not the kind of squirming she'd expected. This was her prize, dammit! And the struggles of this little minx -which accomplished little more than being supremely annoying- were not about ruin it!
After all, a plaything that fought back was like a lousy draw beside a lousy starting hand: no fun and useless in the long run.
The livid gambler tossed her victim back and forth with crueler and angrier vigor; she'd be sure to reprimand, and punish and correct and the undisciplined girl's bad behavior as much as it took until she learned to fall in line.
That's what she gets for thinking she's better than the Queen of Liars. That claim belongs to no one!